Mental health is often neglected and taken lightly, leading to neglect and avoidance. Its negative impact on physical health is also significant, and it is crucial to detect and treat mental health issues promptly. This article focuses on “Stress and Anxiety Management skills” and provides effective strategies for dealing with stress and anxiety and includes all the details related to Mental Health along with its symptoms. So what is Mental Health? Mental health is a condition related to psychological, emotional, and social well-being, affecting thoughts, feelings, and actions. It is essential to understand mental health as it is required at every stage of life. Stress and anxiety are part of mental health issues that need to be addressed promptly to avoid dangerous consequences.
What Is Stress And Anxiety Management Skills?
Stress is a response to pressure and can arise from various situations or life events. Anxiety is a component of stress and is characterized by feelings of fear, apprehension, and worry. Its impact is long-term and can manifest as physical symptoms like rapid heartbeat, restlessness, and sweating. Identifying signs and distinguishing between normal anxiety and anxiety disorders is essential. Stress is a normal reaction caused by the mind when change occurs, resulting in intellectual, physical, and emotional responses. Introducing stress and anxiety management can help individuals deal with these mental issues in a healthier way, leading to a more balanced life.
Using stress positively can lead to growth, change, and action, while negative use can harm the quality of life. The initial part of stress and anxiety management skills is to understand the situation. The person needs to identify the reason for their stress and anxiety. We know that the terms worry, stress and anxiety components have different impacts on people but the strategies to cope with it could be the same. Our mental and emotional health can suffer from the constant pressure, demands and expectations. Hence, in order to live a healthy lifestyle to achieve overall well-being, stress and anxiety management are quite important to tackle.
What Are Stress And Anxiety Symptoms?
There are many symptoms of stress and anxiety, hence, we are listing a few of them. Apart from this, before the end of this article, we will share effective strategies for stress and anxiety management, so don’t miss out on the end.
Physical Stress And Anxiety Symptoms
Some of the common signs and symptoms of stress and anxiety are:
- Sweating
- Feeling restless, tense and nervous
- Trembling
- Feeling weak or tired
- Having a sense of impending panic, danger or doom
- Difficulty in breathing or hyperventilation
- Blood pressure and chest pains
- Muscle aches and headaches
- Panic attacks
- Facing problems sleeping
- Feeling dizzy, sick or fainting
- Blurred eyesight
- Imbalance weight
- Changes to your menstrual cycle
- Hypertension
These are common physical stress and anxiety symptoms but if a person experiences high levels of stress, these physical effects can get more serious. According to the reports, in some cases, anxiety and stress may cause more serious physical health problems that can be long-term such as “Takotsubo cardiomyopathy and secondary amenorrhea”. In Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, a person can feel the pain of heartache which is quite similar to a heart attack and secondary amenorrhea situation occurring in females. It is basically a physical symptom that females face in the regulation of their menstrual cycle. In simple words, they don’t get their period for 3 months or maybe more than.
Effective Strategies For Stress And Anxiety Management
1. Meditation: One of the best ways to deal with anxiety and stress. It has benefits for brain health and overall well-being. It has the potential to make your mind relax and hence most of the time people adopt it when they are struggling with the issues of anxiety, stress and meditation.
2. Hugs: There are several benefits of using this strategy. It not only helps you to show your love, respect or care towards other people but also helps you to feel relaxed. It gives a feeling of satisfaction that someone is there who is listening to you and helping you to deal with your problems. Moreover, the scientific reason for using this strategy is that when someone hugs, touches or sits close to someone, our body releases oxytocin aka “cuddle hormone”. This hormone can help the person to relax and lower stress and anxiety.
3. Guided Imagery: “Take a short vacation in your mind and think about that thing which makes you happy” is the exact meaning of Guided Imagery. It can be done with a recording where a person listens to someone walk you through the peaceful scene. Those who want to try this stress and anxiety management skill need to relax their mind and think about all the sensory experiences in which he or she is involved.
4. Deep Breathing: Whenever you start to feel under pressure, stress or anxiety, the very first thing you can do is focus on your breathing and try to do a deep breathing strategy. Simply say, inhale a deep breath or exhale it and continue the process at least for 5-10 minutes. As per the study, just focusing on your breath can make a big difference to your stress level. The techniques of breathing can calm your body and brain in just a few minutes.
5. Aromatherapy: The aroma of things is really helpful to distract your mind and helps you to feel calm and relaxed and this is the reason that “Aromatherapy” is listed in the list of effective strategies for stress and anxiety management. This therapy has real benefits for stress relief and it can help the person to feel more relaxed, focused and energized. As per the reports of some research, certain scents can change brain wave activity and reduce stress hormones.
6. Healthy Diet: It is one of the most important factors which not only affect our health physically but also mentally. It is really important to consume a balanced diet as a poor diet can bring greater reactivity toward stress and then anxiety. Taking a healthy diet can help the person deal with stress over the long haul.
7. Yoga: We all are aware of the benefits of Yoga. Not only physically, and spiritually, yoga is also helpful psychologically. Yoga has all the elements in it that are helpful to release your stress and act as an effective strategy to provide excellent stress relief.
8. Exercise: Despite knowing that stress and anxiety are the factors of mental health, it is somehow related to physical health and hence it is important to include exercise in your daily routine if you really want to deal with mental issues like stress, anxiety and depression. It is a key to dealing with stress and helps to improve your mental health. There are many types of activities involved in exercise that are helpful in reducing your stress.
Besides this, there are some other effective strategies that are helpful in dealing with mental issues like stress, anxiety, depression etc. Some of them we listed below:
- Creativity
- Get Involved In Physical Activities
- Take Participation in Extracurricular
- Listening Music
- Spend your time with loved ones
- Share your problems with someone
- Social support
- Positive self-talk